Repetiteuriosis

Repetiteuriosis is a mental condition where you have a song in your head at all times. It may be a single song, like getting a song stuck in your head, or it might be a snippet of a song, like an earworm, or it might be like having a juke box in your head, or for you younger readers, like an ipod set on “shuffle”.

You might think this is lovely, waking up each morning to music, like birds singing, or angles playing harps, or zippedee do dah…

But just as often it’s something like this:

And you know, the bitch of this is, that it was an earworm, not the actual song, just the first 12 bars or so. And the capper is that I’m not even a Led Zeppelin fan. I had to look up how to spell it. It took me until 5pm today to figure out what it was. Imagine 10 hours or so of that same refrain repeating in your head…

Footnote: Did you know that James Baskett, the guy who played Uncle Remus won an honorary Academy Award in 1948 for his role? That makes him the first black person to win any Oscar, a fact usually overlooked in favor of Sidney Poitier in 1963.

Good Job Nelson, Good Job

A story to read to your kids:

Town remembers unassuming man whose death brought a surprise

Never Gonna Give You Up…

I rarely find non-musical inspiration, but this one worked for me:

I can’t imagine doing anything everyday for 20 years (that wasn’t biologically necessary).

The longest I was ever anywhere was 11 years, I think.

They say it takes 10,000 hours to be a master at anything, so really the first ten years or so for this guy were just practice…

70 year-old Buddhist monk Hua Chi has been praying in the same spot at his temple in Tongren, China for over 20 years. His footprints, which are up to 1.2 inches deep in some areas, are the result of performing his prayers up to 3000 times a day. Now that he is 70, he says that he has greatly reduced his quantity of prayers to 1,000 times each day.

Read more and see more here

Wait, What?

Perhaps the Way of Heaven may be likened to the
stretching of a composite bow! The upper part is
depressed, while the lower is raised. If the bow-string is
too long, it is cut short: if too short, it is added to.

The Way of Heaven diminishes the more-than-enough
to supply the less-than-enough. The way of man is
different: it takes from the less-than-enough to
swell the more-than-enough. Who except a man of the
Tao can put his superabundant riches to the service
of the world?

Therefore, the Sage does his work without setting
any store by it, accomplishes his task without dwelling
upon it. He does not want his merits to be seen.

When I hear those decry services to the poor, or attempts to reign in the excesses of wealth creation, I think of this passage. It reminds me of right and wrong, and it reminds me that the way of man is different from the way of Tao. It reassures me that the instinct towards equality is correct, as well as reminding me that things as we see them unfold, however ugly, are likely the way of man, and should not suprise us.

The final part reminds me of the goodness of philanthropy, upon which so much of worldly wellness relies.

Craigs List and Trafficking

.So after some intense pressure from a number of Attorney’s General of various states of the US, online service Craigslist has temporarily suspended it’s listings in the Adult Services section. It seems that it was fairly widely known that this section was being used to facilitate prostitution. It was further suggested by some that it was facilitating the exploitation of trafficked persons.

Very good link [here] to WSJ short article to get you up to speed.

I’m glad they shut it down. I hope it stays shut down, or if not, that it has far greater scrutiny by Craigslist. Should they be required to shut it down? No. I don’t think the AG’s had a very good case. The law currently protects services from prosecution for posting materials such as the ones posted on (but not by) Craigslist.

But it was the right thing to do. One should not profit from the exploitation of others, even indirectly. As I understood, Craigslist generated revenue from this section of their service. In my mind that revenue is tied to the exploitation alleged, and is unethical.

Some have suggested that shutting this area of service down makes it more difficult to catch exploiters and increases the risk to those exploited. It is suggested that having this service in the open allows it to be monitored and potentially leads to greater opportunities to end the exploitation. This argument is made very well at HuffPo [here] by a person with much more experience on this matter than me.

I disagree, however. I suggest there was little or no active monitoring or advantage taken by Craigslist or law enforcement to intercept exploitation. I further suggest that by eliminating a ready service for facilitating exploitation, we have driven the cost of business up for the exploiters. Anything we can do to make business more difficult for them is a good thing. If we can drive the cost of doing business up high enough, they will move on to more lucrative (although still likely illegal) activities. My approach would be to make business unprofitable for them, thereby lowering the number of exploited individuals.

It just strikes me as odd that we don’t allow advertising for cigarettes but we do allow advertising for the exploitation of vulnerable people.

The Craigslist move is the right thing to do, and they should be encouraged to make this move permanent, or subject to reinstatement under greatly improved oversight

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

I am a first and foremost and husband and a father. Although somehow allowed the companionship of a lovely woman and two great kids, I am entirely unsuited for the position and retain it only at their discretion. I try to set an example for the kids, fail miserably, then try again the next day. I try not to be an embarrassment or disappointment to my wife, fail (sometimes before leaving the house in the morning), and try again the next day.

I awake each morning with a song in my head and a vague recollection of the past. Since about 1990 my brain as decided to focus on the “big picture” rather than details, much to my consternation. The title of this blog is fitting, although extra bonus points to you if you recognize the literary reference.

I have an on-again-off-again affair with social media, having had not less than four online personas in the past year or so, and that’s only counting the personal ones, not business or project related. So if anything seems vaguely familiar about this blog, it’s not you, it’s me. The opinions expressed here are in no way a reflection of my professional opinion, that of my employer, nor necessarily my own opinion the following day. I am, if nothing else, flexible, if increasingly forgetful. I find that this flexibility serves as an underpinning of my general affability when confronted with references to past statements or actions with which I may have only a passing familiarity.

With this in mind, I invite you to read over this collection of thoughts and items of inspiration. I encourage you to comment as it reassures me that someone is out there, and I reassure you that I post rather frequently, so new content is usually close at hand.

That’s all for now. Something completely different to follow.